Saturday, April 30, 2011

Going Green Mama has been bribing her kids all week long with a trip to opening day of her local farmers market!Good morning Boothers,

I'm hoping the arrival of May is just as exciting for you as it is for our family. We're done with March winds and especially our extended April showers, and we're ready to move on to some May flowers - or at the very least, some planting!

Our first farmers market opens this week, an exciting event for our children that they've waited for for some time. My oldest misses commisserating with the characters she's met: the Pepper Guy who always sneaks her some plants or peppers for her dad, the grandmotherly type who gives her jelly bean prayers, the mom who somehow brings her three daughters to sell organic produce, baked goods and other endeavors.

We're excited about our market time, and hope you are too.

Which brings me to my question: I'm considering setting up a Saturday monring farmers market carnival to share what's growing in your area and great recipes you've stumbled on during the week. Please post if you're interested in participating, and we'll get started!

Friday, April 29, 2011

This year marks my second Mother's Day, and my world has changed since my son Joshua was born. It's funny how motherhood has changed my perspective. I used to care about the environment because I enjoy spending time in nature and I wanted to preserve it for future generations. For a long time those "future generations" were theoretical, but that all changed when my son was born. I suddenly had a real-life, 9 lb. 8 oz. member of that future generation right in my own two arms, a reminder every day to care for our planet.

When I think about the legacy I want to leave for my son, I see a clean and safe place. Air that is clear, fresh and beckons him outdoors. Water that sparkles and calls him to swim and splash. Soil that, while dirty, is free from dangerous contaminants and calls to him to dig holes and grow a garden. Tall trees to climb, berries to pick, frogs to catch and bird that sing. Simple things, really. I want my son to love the outdoors as I love them.

It can be overwhelming to think about the long road to sustainability: the cleaning up and preventing future problems. It's much more difficult to more toward sustainability (or avoid backsliding) with a child, but my convictions are stronger. There's no time for complacency.

I can't, of course, do it alone. But I am optimistic that my efforts along with those of many other individuals, grassroots movements and large-scale organizations can and will give my son the future I imagine for him. I may not achieve all of my goals, but Joshua will know that I fought for his future.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Awhile back I watched a really funny episode of How I Met Your Mother where Marshall watches a documentary about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and then gets obsessed with going green. I tried to find a video clip of the episode to share with you all, but apparently the youtubes did not deem that episode as one that needed to be preserved for posterity. So relying on my hazy memory of a show I saw two months ago, it went something like this:

Marshall is so distracted by coming up with a green initiative for the company he works for that he isn't paying attention to his wife Lily. Finally one night she buys a six pack of beer, puts on some lingerie, and attempts to seduce her husband, but as he's kissing her, he starts glancing at the beer cans.

"Lily," he says. "What did you do with the plastic rings around the cans?"

Lily shrugs and goes back to kissing, but Marshall pushes her away. "What did you do with the plastic rings??!!"

"I threw it away," Lily says.

Marshall goes ballistic. "Don't you know about Garbage Island!!!"

Then instead of having a nice evening with his wife, he goes dumpster diving for the plastic rings in the dumpster behind his apartment.

I found this episode hilarious because I've been there. Not that particular scenario, but I've been in situations where I've been so distracted by all the trash that I can't enjoy whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing. But after the show was over, I started thinking...

Does an episode like that basically making fun of environmentalists help the green cause or hurt it? I've noticed green issues popping up on television shows all over the place lately, and often those shows take a light-hearted and even skeptical approach to what are to me very serious issues. In the case of the How I Met Your Mother episode, I'm sure many viewers were hearing about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for the first time, but at the same time, the show made it seem like people who care about recycling or protecting the earth are complete wackos.

What do you all think about green issues making an appearance on the small screen?

While you think about that, you can watch this episode of Portlandia that I also find hilarious:

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

In honor of Earth month a group of bloggers have joined up with the company Glass Dharma, the maker of some awesome glass straws, to help stop one part of plastic litter, plastic straws. This may seem like a pretty small problem but did you know Americans throw away 138 billion straws and coffee stirrers each year? That adds up to a lot of waste.

Glass Dharma wants to stop this waste by encouraging us to bring our own straws. This may seem kind of weird but a lot of us have gotten use to bring our own bags and water bottles, why not a straw? I keep one in my purse at all times. And while this helps, I often end up with plastic straws even when I ask for no straw. This is because so often restaurants don't ask they just stick a straw in your drink.

This is where the group of bloggers and Glass Dharma come in, they are asking that we all write letters to our favorite restaurants asking them to change their straw policy. While it would be great if reusable options like Glass Dharma straws were put into place but if that's not possible there are paper straws or at least the restaurants can be sure to ask people before using a straw. A lot of people don't need the straw but use it because it was put in their drink so asking would help cut down the number of people getting straws.

While doing these small forms of activism can be rewarding all on their own, Glass Dharma wants to give a little extra encouragement so they are offering one free glass straw per each letter you write, up to five per person.

If you are worried about these straws, don't be. I have had some for a couple of years and haven't broken one yet and I'm not that careful. You can wash them in the dishwasher so you are sure they are clean, they also come with cleaning brushes if anything gets suck in them. And they have carrying cases for keeping your straws with you. I love mine and use at least one a day.

So why not spend a few minutes to help the planet and get a cool reward for it? To find more information and to get your free straws check out my blog- www.retrohousewifegoesgreen.com. Be sure to hurry over because the offer is only good through April 30th!

Monday, April 25, 2011

A harried Greenmom wonders if she's the first parent to ever order her kids to go clean their rooms just so she can get twenty minutes or so of peace and quiet to herself...

I think about plastic kind of a lot.

I think about how it's generally Not A Good Thing, and then I look around my house at how much of it I have around here.

For one thing, I have only really been working on the Green Thing for a few years, and there was a lot in my house before. For another, I honestly have mixed feelings about the Green mantra that Plastic Is Evil, All Must Be Eradicated From Our Lives (Beth Terry's fabulousness notwithstanding).

Is the problem plastic itself, or is the real problem cheap plastic that it almost universally treated as "throwaway"?

I'm asking this not to be provocative or start any arguments--it's a serious question, and I have a lot more research to do before I can come to any conclusion. And I have not completely discounted the possibility that part of this is an apologetic for my own use of plastic in those areas where I can't bring myself to give it up. Because, sadly, in the world today, we're not really presented with many of those happy choices between The Good Choice and The Wrong Choice. It's not a Star Wars movie where some wise and adorable green wrinkly Muppet-character will step up and pronounce sagely, "The path to the Dark Side this is!" We are faced, every day, with choices between awful-for-the-planet and maybe-one-shade-less-awful-for-the-planet-but-who-can-be-sure.

Where plastic is concerned, a few things are fairly clear: disposable plastic water bottles, not to put too fine a point on it, suck. It's a case where there is absolutely no question--petroleum-derived energy/consumption used to produce something that will hold something that's just as easy to get and carry in a permanent container--dumb. pointless. The Dark Side This Is. The whole thing about BPA and other endocrine disruptors in plastic products--also pretty clear, dangerous, not a good idea. Plastic grocery bags? Please.

But then--okay, I'll come Out and confess one of my own lingering-plastic-use areas, the one that frankly led to this post. For example, Saturday night the two adult Easter Bunnies came home from a 3 hour church service exhausted. They paid the babysitter, confirmed that the children were asleep, and proceeded to go about their work. That work involved going into the closet downstairs and pulling out the (plastic) ziploc bag filled with (plastic) empty hinged eggs, filling them with a piece of chocolate or a few jelly beans, and hiding them all over the house.

The chocolate and jelly beans should have been free trade and all-natural; I'm afraid they were not. (My husband went shopping for them, and while he's an absolutely amazing partner and a great guy all around, he is still a green work in progress.) But those plastic eggs, in the exact same ziploc bag, have lived in that closet since we moved into this house, and in the closet of another house for several years before that. Every year I quietly rescue them after they are emptied, and every year they go back into that closet and come out again, and I anticipate that this will continue for as long as the Easter Bunny visits our home. Obviously we bought them before Green was much of a concern, but I have to admit, even now, they don't cause me a lot of sleep loss. And the joy and excitement in our house as those brightly-colored orbs are discovered is pretty unparalleled.

I have a few more plastic-use areas that occasionally give me guilt pangs, but honestly not enough to make me stop. My ziploc bag addiction is fairly well-documented, and it will probably be the last of my disposable plastic areas to go--it's the ziplocs that facilitate most of my freezing-in quantity cooking (like when I make little individual half-cup muffin things of frozen cooked beans or broth to store for later use), and I really do rinse and re-use them whenever I can and until they fall apart. I know I could be better that way; I'm trying. My kids' "waste-free" lunches are only waste-free because I send them with sandwiches in Wrap-N-Mats (fabric and plastic) and other foods in the little re-usable plastic containers you can get at the store. Whenever plastic spoons sneak their way into the house, I start sending those to school with the kids too, with instructions that they bring them back home for washing and re-use. We have plastic flashlights that have been around since well before we got married, plastic Legos that I used to play with when I was a kid and which my kids still enjoy, a plastic colander to drain the pasta, the stuff is everywhere. (And then there's my computer, on which I'm now typing...)

And when I feel this urge to just get it all out of my house and life...I think of when I was a kid, and my hippie parents were on board with the "buy brown eggs because they are more natural than white eggs," a very popular and pervasive "brown is natural and good; white is refined and unnatural and bad" meme at the time. And we were so sure. We now know that brown vs white is absolutely irrelevant where eggs are concerned, and that different kinds of birds just produce different-colored eggs. Brown bread/grains better than white? Absolutely. Eggs? Nope, no real difference there. We were asking the wrong questions. And I start thinking again...

Is there a line to be drawn somewhere between "acceptable" use of plastic and the kind that's wasteful and harmful to the planet? (Er...that is...more wasteful and harmful to the planet than the alternatives?) And are there any resources out there to help us tell exactly how to compare a plastic item's use and footprint versus that of something non-plastic used the same way? For example--and I ask this as someone who does use a stainless steel water bottle--how many times would I need to use my metal bottle, considering the process of obtaining the metal, processing it, and creating the bottle itself (we could also count transport, but that would apply to the water too), to equal the carbon footprint of the same number of disposable plastic bottles? I'm seriously curious. What kind of resources went into the making of my nylon recycled PET re-usable grocery sacks? How many times would I need to use those before they equal what was used to make one of those ridiculous thin plastic throwaway ones? (Okay, maybe 5, since it takes 5 plastic ones to equal what my 1 nylon one can carry.) Harder to calculate would be the fact that the disposable ones don't break down and result in more garbage, so that would have to be figured into the bottom line...but I assume petroleum or coal or other non-renewable resources are used in the production of a lot more than just plastic (although admittedly it's different, since plastic is made from petroleum), so where is the difference, really?

So...does anyone have any thoughts, or sites, or calculators to offer here? (I'm sending a note to Beth at My Plastic Free Life; I would love it if she felt like weighing in...) Any other thoughts or perspectives I'm completely missing?

I am ready to be convinced, seriously. I don't have any great love for plastic, I just keep going 'round and 'round on the same issue, and I guess I need some new data if I'm going to head in any brave new direction. So, as usual, I throw it out to y'all: Is plastic evil? Or can its effects be mitigated?

Saturday, April 23, 2011

The last few weeks have ushered in enthusiastic discussions of the Easter Bunny, hidden eggs and coloring shells. (Which has somehow been interpreted as painting cracked eggshells with watercolors, but that is another story.)

For us, it's been a question of how much is too much. We don't want to over-temper enthusiasm, but the overcommercialization of this and just about every other holiday is a bit too much. Last year, I admit, we got off fairly easy. Small baskets held an Easter coloring book, few plastic eggs with goldfish crackers and M&Ms, and a small trinket.

Kindergarten, though, has ushered in new expectations. Some I don't quite understand, like the desire of our daughter to eat a hard-boiled egg for breakfast (she has never had one before). Thankfully, she hasn't discussed the potential for loot Easter morning.

Instead of emphasizing stuff, we're hoping to turn the focus on family and experiences. While I think they're too young to attend the intricate evening Holy Week services, we're trying in other ways. Making Hot Cross buns on Good Friday and Resurrection Rolls for Easter dinner. Dying Easter eggs for the first time, and if the weather holds (and as I write this, it's pretty tentative), going to an egg hunt and children's celebration at a local church. Not to mention a visit from Mama and Papa.

Hopefully what my children will remember about childhood Easters is the family time and the stuff we did, not the stuff they got.

How does your family mark the Easter season? Are you able to turn the attention from the idea of "stuff?" What will your "Easter Bunny" bring this season?

Friday, April 22, 2011

On the day dedicated to celebrating you, our Mother Earth, I'd like to write a letter of appreciation. You may not always give me what I want, in fact you often go against my wishes. You give me sun when I ask for rain, and snow when I ask for sun. You give me earthquakes when I ask for calm. And stagnant humidity when all I ask for is a cool breeze.

And yet, I love and admire you to pieces. I am obsessed by your fossil fuels that permeate every aspect of my life from the warmth of my home to the bristles of my tooth brush. Indeed I am most grateful for the natural resources that you provide. I am in awe that the tiniest of minerals found on a beach in Madagascar or a mine in the Mongolia can facilitate communication across great distances or provide beautiful and hard paint for the exterior of my car.

The diversity of your plant and animal life is so amazing that I do my best to replicate it wherever I go. In college I was fortunate enough to spend a semester in Madagascar and so now my family keeps a small Madagascar Peacock gecko in a glass aquarium in the living room. We use your precious water to mist her several times per day and we heat her tank with your fossil fuels (especially in our cold Colorado winters). And I eat a variety of tropical fruits and other foods each week even though they are not suited to grow in the Colorado climate.

Most of all I appreciate your tolerance for all that my human brothers and sisters do upon your surface. We've paved miles of your surface with roads and parking lots. Drilled nearly to your core and mined off the tops of mountains. And yet, you hardly complain. Sure, drastic temperature variations on your surface may spur the occasional tornado. And, improper drainage or deforestation may lead to devastating mudslides, but all and all, we've managed to reach a population of nearly 7 billion. For the most part, whatever we humans do seems to work.

Nonetheless, I sometimes wonder if we are making wise choices. Perhaps my brothers and sisters should worry less about what you don't do and focus instead on living in harmony with all your seasons? Indeed, I wonder what it would be like for humans to accept rain for rain and wind for wind? The birds don't seem to mind. And, I wonder if we humans chose to appreciate your natural beauty in its native environments what might happen? Or what if we chose to focus on renewable fuels rather than your finite resources, what might be possible?

Could human cultures be as unique as each climate and ecosystem? What if we are going about this all wrong and the source of the problems we do have stems from our desire to control that which is too big to control? I've learned by now that mothers always seem to know, so perhaps you can share your thoughts? What is the best way for us all to live in harmony?

Thursday, April 21, 2011

I've been asked to run a booth for the Earth Day event of an elementary school in the area. The organizer said she doesn't care what topic I focus on, but the main goal is to inspire kids and their families to go green. I plan to put together some kind of display or game of things kids can do to go green, but I need your help. So here's my question:

What are some things elementary age kids can do to go green?

Help me get the wheels in my brain turning! And if you have some ideas for how to display or present the information, that would be great too!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

A month or so ago, a Facebook friend raved about a new book she was reading - The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball. I must confess that I, of literary love and former English major, haven't read a book in eons. Too busy with the kids, their school, with the new house, the new garden, and yet, for some reason, this book appealed. I reserved a copy at my local library and figured if I never got around to reading it, I'd only be out the $.75 reservation fee.

The Dirty Life chronicles the autobiographical of a jaded New York City reporter who falls in love with a rural farmer and with farming. The author, Kristin, met her husband Mark on a Pennsylvania farm and later relocates with him to carve out a fruitful farm on virtually abandoned land in upstate New York. The book tracks the first rocky (literally) year in which the couple conceived of the idea of creating a full-diet CSA from their farm. They hoped to offer vegetables, meat, maple syrup, dried beans and more to their patrons - all by using horses instead of tractors. Learning on the fly and from borrowed books, Kristin and Mark soon find themselves knee-deep in herds of cattle, dairy cows, piglets, and horses pulling an Amish-plow.

Reminiscent of Animal Vegetable Miracle, this book too uncovers how hard farming can be, true losses, frustration, and the miracle of a successful crop. Indeed, I read this book as quickly - if not more so - than Barbara Kingsolver's book as Kristin Kimball is not only a fabulous storyteller but also an artisan with words, drawing the reader into the beauty and pain of her situation. More than Animal Vegetable Miracle, though, The Dirty Life resonates with authenticity. This book does not document a year's experiment but a leap of faith, a forever.

Kristin paints her husband, Mark, the true farmer of the pair, with an honest brush. She presents his oddities, his unusual beliefs fairly. Mark, at one point, tells her that he has a "magic circle" that takes care of him. That he does the right thing and it is done to him. In truth, his life does seem to have worked that way and I borrowed a bit of that belief when I handed out eggs to neighbors last week.

If you need another reason to pick up this romp of a book consider this. The Dirty Life offers a peek into the new agriculture. Just five years ago, foodies everywhere bemoaned the fact that the average farmer was in his or her sixties. No more. Last month, the New York Times hailed the coming of a new generation of farmers. This new generation is determined to right the wrongs of industrial farming. To go organic, on a small scale. They're in, they're the next big thing, and The Dirty Life showcases - whether meant to or not - life as a hipster farmer. If only they would have named their farm RadicchioHead instead of Essex Farm . . .

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Retro Housewife with another late post, it's also short as I had a long stressful day.

Not all greenies love Earth Day, some are turned off by the greenwashing that goes on now. I personally love it. Sure I get annoyed at the endless emails I get about companies using Earth Day to promote their not so green products but I try and overlook that.

I think one reason I love Earth Day is because I live in a part of the country (Oklahoma) that doesn't always take to kindly to environmentalist. However, around Earth Day there are green events everywhere and I don't seem so weird, haha. Like today, I went to the annual Earth Day meeting for the local recycling coalition. There was a speaker that talked about the water issues in my town. Thursday there is an Earth Day/Water Fest at the local college as well as an eco art show.

So are you like me and love Earth Day or is the greenwashing just to much for you?

Monday, April 18, 2011

It’s kind of funny, but I’ve never before really considered what being a “suburbanite” meant to my identity as a human being. I mean, obviously I know that’s what I am, it’s a significant part of my whole blogger-ness, it’s what I am familiar with and write about.But after spending three whirlwind days in midtown Manhattan, and really looking at it through my suburban Greenmom lens, it’s making me think a lot harder than I ever have before. (I’ll do a more intensive “What I Did Over The Weekend” post on my own blog in the next few days.)

I grew up in the suburbs. I went to college in the city, but my graduate work was in a small town, and once I moved to the Chicago area to work I pretty much lived in the burbs and worked all over the place.Then I married, and my husband and I, you guessed it, bought a house in the suburbs. So it’s pretty much who I am and what I know.

One reason for my skepticism may be that the kinds of “cities” these urbanites are talking about are not generally found in the U.S. –Europe, Australia, Canada maybe, but not really the States. So I maybe just haven’t seen those kinds of cities.I also am a suburbanite who generally has been able to work close to my home or even do significant telecommuting, rather than being someone who attempts to commute to the city. I totally get how that is anything but a sustainable way of life, although I also get that it’s unavoidable for a lot of people as things are now. I think a lot of cities are moving in a good direction— Increasing pedestrian-only spaces (like New York’s Times Square), increasing food accessibility in places like Chicago and Philly, even Wal-Mart’s new rooftop garden plans…this is good stuff.(I just used the words “Wal-mart” and “good” in the same sentence, didn’t I? Look! Up in the sky! Is that a winged pig I’m seeing up there? J)

But…I still don’t want to live in the city. I don’t like high-density-people-places. I like space, and I like room for plants in places other than roofs and the three foot space between one building and the next. I like asymmetry. I like being able to bike places. I like my sprawl disorganized garden. I like my corner grocery stores, our farm market, and being able to stop pretty much anywhere I would need to on my way home from work. Sure, it’d be better if I were walking and biking to work every day, but when one 10 mile roundtrip commute covers work, children’s pickup, library, groceries, post office, bank, and the occasional splurge on Chinese takeout, and I have to do almost no other driving, is that really so bad?

Sustainable urban development is getting tons of press right now…but what about sustainable sub-urban development? It’s happening in some places—Montgomery County, Maryland, where I grew up, is in fact focusing a lot on “Smart growth” and creating sustainable, walkable communities. This is awesome, in my opinion…but I’d love to see more. And not just new development, but ways to make where we already live work for us--it's true for cars, it's true for homes--what you already have will almost always be more sustainable and less carbon-intensive than throwing it out and starting over.

Isn’t there something between high-density urban communities and living in a yurt spinning my own wool from my dairy sheep and eating canned veggies from my edible garden, something that can qualify as a “sustainable” lifestyle?

Shouting out to Booth readers again—where do you live? What’s it like? I think it’s fairly clear that the word “suburban” is one that calls out particular images to a lot of people which may not match; our nice little Illinois suburb with the farm-stand a quarter mile away probably bears very little resemblance to California’s sprawl or the Metro-accessible Washington D.C. suburbs.

What do you think of all this? Can our suburbs become sustainable? What would have to happen or change to make it possible?

--Jenn the Greenmom (who would actually love to go hang out in that yurt for a while...)

Saturday, April 16, 2011

In which Going Green Mama hopes for a little peace and quiet... It's time to spring clean our house, and I'm not just talking about clutter. Winter means the slippery slope of more screen time. More cooking and home improvement shows watched. More movies brought home from the library. And more times of someone being busted with the Leapster in her bedroom closet. Swapping our cable provider and its bank of recorded shows hasn't seemed to make a dent. So Turn off the TV Week, which begins Monday, is the perfect excuse to take a break. I'm looking forward to a week without sports shows, without being glued to the morning news, without wondering whether the movies have been returned or having an after-school battle over TV. I'm looking forward to playing in the garden, taking long walks, teaching my child to ride her bike and cooking the recipes I've checked out on the screen. And perhaps, in the process, we'll have spring-cleaned our lives.

Friday, April 15, 2011

From Emerald Apron, aka Abbie I've been writing for the Moms Clean Air Force, both on my personal blog and here at the Green Phone Booth, for about a month. Though I explained my rationale for joining on my own blog, I also want to introduce the Moms Clean Air Force to all the Green Phone Booth readers. The Moms Clean Air Force is a blogging team assembeled by the Environmental Defense Fund with the mission to fight for clean air for our children and encourage other moms and dads to join us. We hope to protect the Clean Air Act from politicians and corporations who want to weaken it, and we want to toughen the standards for mercury and other air toxics. I'm honored to be working with some really fabulous bloggers: we are a diverse group with the common goal of a healthy future for our children. This is a new kind of activism for me. I'm used to reading and learning about environmental topics, teaching about pollution and challenging my students to problem solve, and making changes at home for my own family. But I've started to feel like that's not enough. I want to do more for my son Joshua's future. Though we're serious about fighting for clean air, we also have some fun events in the works, including a Mother's Day blog carnival - details to come! I'd love to have you get involved in this movement. Please follow the Moms Clean Air Force blog, like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. Write to the EPA and your representatives, attend a mercury testing event or blog about what clean air means to you. I hope that we'll see positive political and environmental changes thanks in part to the Moms Clean Air Force!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Santa Claus brought my son a real-life adventure book this past Christmas. My son is 4, so he tossed it aside and went for the toys with wheels, but I think this book holds a great deal of promise for us over the next 7 years….

When I first opened the book to a suggestion that we visit a landfill, I thought that many GPB readers would love the ideas in this book as much as I do!

The book is unique in that it suggests types of places to visit. Examples that are particularly appealing to green parents include a migration path, a working farm or a wind farm. (Other suggested sites relate to arts, science, history and sports.)

Interestingly, #37 is a farmers’ market and #60 is a first-rate secondhand store.

The book includes interesting talking points as well as suggestions for finding local spots. The last 20 pages of the book feature lists of specific places across North America to correspond with some of the 101 suggestions.

If you’re dreading the “I’m bored!” chorus this summer or feel uninspired when it comes to exploring with your kiddos, check out the ideas in this book.

What one type of place would you put on the must-see list for kids?

Disclaimer & Credit: I do not know Joanne O’Sullivan. I have not received any incentive to write this blog post. Santa Claus brought this book to our house with no conditions attached to its delivery. I did, however, first read about this book in a post at Field Trips with Sue & I’m grateful that Sue shared the info with her readers!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

The temps hit the upper 80s yesterday here in Raleigh, and while I was hanging with my kiddos at the playground, my feet started screaming, "Get me out of these shoes!" This is the time of year when I toss the boots and sneakers to the back of the closet and switch to full time sandal-wearing.

I enjoy many things about living la vida verde, but shoe shopping is not one of them. The used shoe selection at my local Goodwill basically sucks, but buying new shoes requires hours of research and debate: what are they made of, where are they made, who made them, how long will they last, how much do they cost...Here are a few brands I've been looking at, but I'm really interested to hear what kinds of sandals you greenies have bought and why you love them.Two years ago, I bought a pair of Simple Shoes flip-flops on clearance for an amazing deal. They are cute and comfortable...and pick up every piece of dirt they come in contact with. After two years, they're so dirty, it's embarrassing to wear them beyond my own backyard. Simple Shoes current line of flip-flops look like they'd stay clean, but they also look identical to the kind I could get for $25 cheaper at Old Navy.

Before beginning my green journey, I was definitely a $5 flip-flop kind of girl, so I've been kind of interested in these Okabashi shoes and their $15 price tag. They're made in Atlanta, GA, contain recycled material, and are recyclable by sending them back to the company, but they're made of plastic, and I have this thing about plastic shoes being the ugliest shoes ever invented. (All you Crocs lovers can shoot me now.)

Nowadays, I wouldn't mind paying more than $5 if I felt like I was investing in a real quality pair of shoes. I've had my eye on these handmade-in-New-York Aurora Shoes for awhile now, but maybe vegan shoes from MooShoes would be a better choice than leather and it's environmental issues. Or maybe I should check out some of the "green" apparel companies like Patagonia or Keen.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

From the forgetful Retro Housewife. Sorry about the lack of post last week.

Today USA Today posted an article on the topic of early puberty. The article discussed how girls are developing much faster with about 15% of American girls begin puberty by age 7. This is very alarming and has the medical community searching for answers. While things like obesity have been shown to play a role, studies have also shown that chemicals known as endocrine disruptors maybe to blame.

Your endocrine system is a system of glands. These glands secrete different hormones into your bloodstream. These hormones regulate things like growth and development, metabolism, and mood. Endocrine disruptors are just what they sound like, chemicals that disrupt your endocrine system. Endocrine disruptors can be found in all kinds of things from plastics to pesticides. Some that you may have heard of are bishenol A (BPA), phthalates, Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) and Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

There are some simple ways to reduce your exposure to these harmful chemicals. Here are just a few.

Monday, April 11, 2011

--A suburban Greenmom has an unexpected encounter with a different kind of green-eyed monster…

Okay, this is sort of weird. And I'm not sure why I'm feeling like this.

Later this week, the chorus I sing with is going on tour. Which is supremely cool. The timing could be better, and I’ll miss my family desperately for the three days we’re gone--but on the other hand, three days in NYC with my singing girlfriends (and guy friends too, but they won’t be who I’m hanging out in bars with) without meals to cook and kids to get to school, and getting paid to do it, is hard to complain about, you know?

But there’s this weird little nagging voice in my head that is making me a little twitchy. It’s an easy voice to ignore, but what twitches me is the realization that it’s speaking at all.

The main question this twitchy little voice is asking: “If your urban polished ‘normal’ girlfriends knew the weird little green things you do every day, would they think you’re weird?’”

I don’t wear makeup, unless I absolutely have to. A little tinted lip gloss is all, even on stage (it’s a chorus of 100, for Heaven’s sake.) I don’t put product in my hair, except for a little hairspray to hold it in place when it’s falling in my eyes or more in need of a washing than I’d like.

And as far as that goes—I only shower every other day. On the other days I get clean, of course, but I don’t go full-body under the spray and I don’t wash my hair.

My deodorant is a mixture of cornstarch, baking soda, and essential oils that I pat under les pits every morning. It has not let me down yet. And I use the exact same little jar of powder to dry-shampoo my hair on the off-days, just to keep a little more oil from appearing.

My facial moisturizer is a little bottle of grapeseed oil from my kitchen, with some essential oils added. My body lotion is in a little re-used jar, also homemade in my kitchen blender.

I’ve started doing the raw green smoothies thing for breakfast. (I’ll post on this at some point too…)

When I get a cough or headache, I reach for the herbal teas and homeopathic remedies and little jars of homemade herbal tincture.

I am fairly militant about bottled water—I’ll go without rather than open a plastic bottle.

I think on some level this is tapping into my grade-school-on-up desire to have people Not Think I’m Weird. Which is silly, because, honestly, I am sort of Weird and always have been, and a big part of my growing up and finding my place in the world has been about embracing who I am and not apologizing for it. But maybe because I will actually have a roommate (whom I totally like, by the way, she’s awesome) for three days, or maybe shadowed by my 25th year HS reunion coming up this fall, I’m finding myself on some weird under-level wondering “will this make people not like me any more?” I’m thinking, “Will they think I’m judging them because I do things differently, and thus preemptively roll their eyes and blow me off?” I’m hearing those Mean Girl voices from eighth grade going, “OMG, she’s so weird—do you know what she puts on her armpits every morning?” It’s completely irrational, I know my singing girlfriends better than that, but…the voice lingers.

Dopey. But I need to name it, process it, and move on. And of course, now there’s the double helping of shame—because at the same time as I’m feeling embarrassed at some of my off-the-wall green behaviors, I’m also now embarrassed to admit to the Green Sisterhood that I have this shame at all. Which also needs naming and processing. And hopefully, purging.

So, can I throw it out to y’all now? Anyone have any experience with this, any similar little nagging voices? Am I the only one who has dealt with this?

--Jenn the Greenmom

Who probably won’t be hanging out in bars too much anyway, we’ll be working too hard and I’ll be too exhausted. But it’s fun to think about…

Saturday, April 9, 2011

In which Going Green Mama impatiently waits for her peas to sprout.... Every April, when I lived in Kansas City, I'd visit the Overland Park Farmers Market, where rows of plants, the season's first produce and the Shriner's vidalia onions would tempt us early-morning risers. Nearly a decade later, April is hard for me. In Indiana, I'm "supposed" to wait another month yet to plant, the markets won't open for three more weeks, and the grocery stores, and even most winter market offerings, are limited and depressing. It's tough to encourage good eating habits when you're stuck largely with frozen or, gasp, canned options. Which is why I'm happy I stumbled onto a few new options in our area. I'm seeing more options for CSAs, which is a good idea if you're up for the lottery of the whims of the weather and the challenge of finding something to do with a dozen bok choy for the week. I stumbled on an organic dairy's trailer one Thursday, and was thrilled to find everything from produce (grown on land in a more southern part of the state) to meats, eggs and cheeses. The difference in price was far worth not having to stand in line at the supermarket! My latest find, though, is an interesting one, one I wasn't quite sure of at first but am now looking forward to. I've stumbled across a local/organic produce delivery service, where you can customize your weekly produce basket delivery. And when I mean customize, I just don't mean tacking on items (though the variety of vendors is fabulous!) I got my first notice yesterday, prompting me to customize this week's basket. Gone were the grapefruit (which I doubt are local); in were extra asparagus, at no additional charge. Delivered to my doorstop. Convenience as a working parent? Great. I'm just hoping the product matches up to my optimism. How do you manage eating seasonally in the early spring? What resources have you found for eating locally or, at least, fresher produce?

Friday, April 8, 2011

In which Truffula takes on another project in her spare time (oops! did she write that "out loud"?!)...

The long and short of it is that I hated looking at the island in our cul-de-sac. The grass was worn. The pavers at the mailboxes were half-buried. One of the trees was well on its way to The Great Beyond. What's a Green She-ro to do but to dig in?

I planned ahead for this project. When the leaves from the deciduous tree in the island fell two Falls ago, I gathered the TruffulaBoyz, equipped us with rakes, and started scoopin'. Eight trashcans-full later, my compost bins were overflowing, and the street was clean.

Fast-forward to last Fall: I gathered signatures of from all of the neighbors, marched the paperwork over to the homesowners' association office, and submitted my "architectural change" proposal for the circle.

Two neighbors offered to cut down the dying tree, and made short work of the task.

Come October, I dug my holes in the compacted soil, amended the soil with lugged-over pails of by-then finished compost, and lovingly transplanted perennials I'd been cultivating in the nursery our yard. One neighbor spontaneously came over, bearing a pot full of things she had just thinned out from her own garden. Another gave me free rein to remove sweet woodruff, and to rehome it. The results looked great for a fledgling garden.

And, then... the landscapers came through with their rakes and blowers, and beat me to that year's crop of leaves. What was worse, they raked and scraped up my carefully-planted specimens! The horror! I tried not to think about the planting tragedy all winter long, hoping that Mother Nature would have looked favorably on any remaining roots.

With the (finally) warming weather of Spring, the boyz and I ventured out to the circle. Miraculously, we spotted bits of green. They were very small bits, but bits all the same. Hurrah!

Hopefully, this will keep plants safe and little feet out.

I quickly shepherded my gang home, pulled out paper, crayons, and page protectors, and devised some signs: "Plants at work! Please help us grow." Just as quickly, we headed back out with hammer, twine, and the signs, hoping to fashion "fence posts" around our precious plants from found twigs.

While we were improvising our fence, a neighbor offered us some real stakes. Now, hammering them in began in earnest. I'm happy to report that exactly zero fingers were injured in the process -- all of the hammer strokes were aimed true. Whew!

And to the neighbor who waved as she drove out, and then stopped her car to roll down the window and comment: Thanks, it was nice to see you, too. Yes, children do play in this circle area. No, they will not automatically destroy the plantings. The solution of choice is for them to get invested in the project some dirt under their fingernails. Isn't it grand that this modest project has gotten us talking to each other just a little? In the meanwhile, let's have a violet green salad!

Thursday, April 7, 2011

I had to hit Home Depot a couple days ago for a toilet plunger. (Yup, if your eight year old puts enough recycled toilet paper down a toilet, it will very nearly overflow!) After pulling into the parking lot, I was greeted by this beauty.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to think.

The eat local movement has clearly hit the mainstream if big box stores are cashing in on it. But isn't there something oxymoronic about that?

It is really great that people who wouldn't or couldn't visit a farmer's market or a locally owned nursery can obtain affordable vegetable starts at a major outlet. Indeed, the nursery section of Home Depot was overloaded with all different kinds of vegetable seedlings, berry plants and fruit trees. As a result, I'm certain there will be more vegetable gardens out there.

But what is Home Depot selling? From what I saw, most of their stock was non-organic, hybrid and pretty healthy looking. Not something I necessarily want in my back yard and yet . . .

Well, what do you think about the chained locavore movement? Good thing? Bad thing? Or a bit of both?

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

To me, any time spent outdoors is meditative and relaxing, but unlike other outdoor activities that I enjoy, gardening literally reaps rewards. If only I could outwit the squirrel that's terrorizing my garden!

Walking

We live less than two miles away from my boys' school, so several times a week, I walk to pick them up. At first, I walked grudgingly, feeling obligated to avoid the car but resentful of the time it took out of my day. At some point, my attitude shifted, and now I absolutely adore that walk. I love the exercise, the long talks with my boys without distractions, and the time spent outside. During the winter, we got out of the habit of walking, and after awhile even my boys started asking, "When are we going to walk again?"

Cleaning with baking soda and vinegar

As a mother of young children, I love being able to clean without worrying about what my boys are touching or inhaling. Before I learned about baking soda and vinegar, I cleaned during nap time. Now I clean with my kids right beside me, often handing them a spray bottle and rag.

Spinach, Kale, Swiss Chard, and Collards

My family didn't eat a lot of vegetables when I was growing up, and we definitely didn't eat greens. The first year that we joined a CSA, I suddenly found myself drowning in bags of greens. I had no idea there were so many kinds! Over the years, I've not only learned to cook them, but my whole family loves them. (But please hold the mustard greens.) Our current favorite way to eat our greens is by blending them with fruit in a smoothie. If I leave the spinach out of our morning smoothie, my three-year-old complains, "Aaah, I want to get strong!"

Monday, April 4, 2011

A suburban greenmom longs for a spring-scrubbed home but dreads the process of getting there...

Okay, I have to be perfectly honest here.Reading posts from all my garden-greeny friends who are already harvesting stuff from their gardens is making me want to throw lingering icicles at y’all. Because I live just outside Chicago, in a part of the country where it is not generally considered advisable to plant anything in the ground till, oh, say, Mother’s Day.

But today…today it was 70 degrees out and for the first time we got to open all our windows.First the first time we let the stale winter air out of our house, let some new spring air in.It felt amazing.

Unfortunately, right on the heels of this lovely airing-out—the realization that spring cleaning is going to have to happen soon.

My husband and I are not great housekeepers.Pretty bad, actually.We both have this tendency to procrastinate and procrastinate until the job is much worse than it otherwise would have been.In general, I’m the one who keeps the daily clutter as manageable as possible, and when it’s time for the serious every-other-week cleanings (er…okay, I’ll be honest, we don’t do the serious cleanings every other week, more like every other month) he’s best at stuff like floors and tubs and stuff like that.And we do our weekly “clean before the sitter comes so she won’t think we live like pigs” blow-through before choir practice on Wednesday nights.

But. We’re going to have to take a whole weekend, and fairly soon, to really clean this house. To move every blessed thing off the kitchen surfaces and scrub the heck out of them. To attack the creeping tub-grime. To empty and scrub the refrigerator, and refill it again with the actual food and compost or throw out the science projects. To move the actual furniture and vacuum the living room. And bedrooms. The shelves.The books. The surfaces.

This will be our first year trying to do this since my discovering natural cleaning products—by which I mean, vinegar and baking soda. Unfortunately my husband does not share my admiration for the stuff, and his idea of “green” cleaners are anything with the word “natural” in the name. And he genuinely believes that having separate bottled purchases for the toilet, the counter, even the kitchen versus the bathroom, will make things get cleaner.Which all results in a combination of way more bottles and containers than we have room for, many of which contain a bunch of chemical nasties. (This is not me complaining, by the way—I have a husband who shares the cleaning with me, and I fully realize he’s worth his weight in gold.)

I on the other hand have a spray bottle full of a mixture of white vinegar and water, with a few drops each of lemon and lavender essential oils to help with cleaning and reduce the smell (which I don’t mind but which hubby hates). I use it for pretty much everything.

Still, I’m fairly new at this, and I get the sense that a lot of Booth readers have more tricks up your sleeves than I do. I was just shy of giddy to discover this site with 1001 uses for distilled white vinegar, and even giddier to realize that I already know several hundred of them. (Now to be clear, I haven’t taken a count to see if they actually come up to 1001…y’all knock yourselves out if you wish, and report back. J)

So vinegar, or baking soda, or that wonderful bubbly mixture of vinegar and baking soda, will form the backbone of my cleaning supplies. Addition of good antifungal and antibacterial essential oils (like tea tree, lemon, eucalyptus, and maybe lavender because it smells so yummy) to boost their effectiveness.But beyond that I’m not sure where to go, or if I’ll even need to go anywhere.

Crunchy Betty, my heroine of the blogoverse, has been on this whole soap nut kick lately.And like so many things Betty, she’s presented it in a way that has me both cowering a little in intimidation (as in, “what, just toss them in the laundry? It can’t possibly be that easy, I’m sure I’d screw it up”) and dying to give them a try…but I haven’t gone there yet. It’s next on my list, though—I love her idea of cooking the saponins out of the nuts and then freezing the soapnut-liquid in ice cube trays; that’s just brilliant. One would have to keep it separate from the frozen concentrated chicken broth cubes, I guess, but labeling would take care of that, right?

She also mentions coconut oil as a good household cleaner, for things like furniture and bronze polish.

There’s a motherlode of natural cleaning products found here, too, at Eco-cycle, including one for non-toxic silver polish. Which means I might actually get Great-Aunt Mary’s gorgeous but horribly tarnished silver coffee service looking pretty again…and honestly, I’m going to need to start now to convince the family (especially my kids) that once the current box of Swiffers (bought a couple of years ago, before greenlightenment) runs out, we don’t need to buy more of them and can use other kinds of dustrags.

Of course, finding the time to actually do all this will be much harder than finding the cleaning supplies, especially now that the cleaning supplies are so much easier to come by. But does anyone have any large and fabulous ideas (or small gnarly ones) I haven’t thought of yet? Anything that would give this over-busy two-jobs-adults short-attention-span-theater children family an easier time of spring cleaning?

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Growing up, Lent always meant "fish days" on Friday and giving up something benign like chocolate, most years anyway. It wasn't until the last three or four years that I made it a bit more interesting.

Like the year I gave up Diet Coke, and the world kept a wide bearth from this caffeine addict. Or the year I said the rosay on a daily basis - forcing me to refocus on my relationship with God and giving up, of all things, my time. And this year? Breaking a bad habit that I've beaten myself up for years: junk food. Again, all seem like very small steps on the outset, but breaking well entrenched bad habits and birthing more positive choices have been my focus.

Making more positive choices have been the focus of a few articles I've stumbled across lately, one that's even created some controversy in our diocese's newspaper. It's about going green for Lent and whether that's a real spiritual choice or just lip service.

After an artice ran in the paper about a group that was promoting an entire Lenten study focusing on the environment, letters lit up questioning whether that was truly what Lent - and the preparations of our hearts - was about. The web has various interdenominational themes on going green for Lent, including a 40-day carbon fast (another version here) and a "Green Lent" Bible study that melds scriptural verses with small positive actions.

Our present crises – be they economic, food-related, environmental or social – are ultimately also moral crises, and all of them are interrelated. They require us to rethink the path which we are travelling together. Specifically, they call for a lifestyle marked by sobriety and solidarity, with new rules and forms of engagement, one which focuses confidently and courageously on strategies that actually work, while decisively rejecting those that have failed.

Turning Lent into an impetus for changing habits, however small and entrenched, is never a bad thing. It's obvious it can change your relationship to this world. How it impacts your relationship with God, though, is between you and Him.

Friday, April 1, 2011

I was very worried last week when I saw a well-meaning woman give this advice to a pregnant friend: "No seafood!" Fish and shellfish are good for everybody, especially pregnant women and children, because they contain good fats that are essential for brain development. Mercury is a concern for some fish, since mercury bioaccumulates and can cross the placenta, but that doesn't mean all seafood is off limits.

Mercury in the environment comes mostly from coal-fired power plants, and the EPA is working to make amendments to the Clean Air Act to limit mercury emissions. I support that legislation, but I'm not going to skip seafood in the mean time! I love seafood and I try to eat low on the food chain, since mercury and other toxins will be lowest. Since I'm a biology teacher and my husband's family has a shellfishing business that provides us with fresh-caught fish and shellfish, I know where our seafood fits on the food chain. However, you don't need these kinds of connections to know what fish to avoid.

The environmental defense fund has this handy Seafood Selector guide to help you choose which fish is best for you. You can look up specific seafood to find out which are "Eco-Best," "Eco-OK," and "Eco-Worst" for a variety of reasons, including overfishing, farming issues and mercury. They even have a printable Sushi Pocket Guide for sushi lovers!

I'm happy to see that my husband's farmed clams are rated Eco-Best, and my personal favorite sea scallops are Eco-OK. Blue fin tuna, shark, and farmed salmon round out the Eco-Worst list. Albacore tuna, which I craved when I was pregnant (and earned me the nickname "Big Tuna" from my brothers), is also Eco-Best, if it comes from the US or Canada.

Since we enjoy fishing, I also check out guidelines from our state's DEP for recommendations on fish native to our area, with advice specific to our local environment. I try to serve seafood at least once each week, and much more often in the summer, so it's great to know I'm making the right choices.

While there are some fish that we all should avoid, there are plenty of safe options for pregnant and breastfeeding moms and children. Don't cut out all the healthy aspects of seafood in an effort to avoid mercury. And why not join the Moms Clean Air Force in supporting the New Mercury and Air Toxics Standards to help preserving the safety of seafood for our children!

*Disclosure: The Moms Clean Air Force is giving me an honorarium for my time writing, promoting and participating in events in support of clean air and the Clean Air Act. I believe that this is one of the best ways I personally can contribute to positive environmental change on a large scale.